Egypt Has a Long History of Grave Robbers2:47 p.m. ET (1847 GMT) May 18, 2000

By Jonathan Broder

FOXNews.com

BAHARIYA, Egypt 
One of the most extraordinary things about the Valley of
the Mummies is its good fortune in escaping the plundering hands of grave robbers. Most other archaeological sites in Egypt havenít been so lucky.

William
Tolan/FOXNews.com

It was common for grave robbers to plunder tombs and
then use the same places to bury their own families, as was the case here

Of the 11 tombs containing more than 250 mummies that have been uncovered so
far, none has been previously breached and looted, says Zahi Hawass, the
Egyptian government's chief archaeologist and leader of the Valley of the
Mummies excavations.

"They are untouched," he told FOXNews.com. "We are finding mummies encased in
gold, paintings, coins and other artifacts, exactly as they were buried in
the Greco-Roman period" between the third century B.C. and the fourth century A.D.
"In Egypt, that is extremely rare."

Indeed, grave robbing has been the norm in Egypt since ancient times. At the
Egyptian Museum in Cairo, a 4,000-year-old cenotaph  a stone tablet
inscribed with hieroglyphics  recounts a short-lived rebellion against King
Mentuhotep, in which the poor smashed open royal tombs and looted the gold
and jewels buried with the mummies.

The museum also has the 7th century B.C. Papyrus of the Grave Robber. The
text describes a contemporaneous scandal in Luxor where one official of the
26th Dynasty accused another of looting the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
The account traces how royal investigators initially exonerated the accused
but upon further examination found him guilty and sentenced him to a
whipping.

William
Tolan/FOXNews.com

The paintings in many tombs depict the mummification
of the dead and the judgment that awaits them in the afterlife

Sadly, says Hawass, that may be one of the few times that anyone in Egypt has
been caught and punished for grave robbing.

Over the centuries, he said, thieves emptied tombs of their mummies and their
treasures and then used the same tombs to bury their own families with their
valuables. Eventually, he said, another generation of grave robbers would
come along, plunder the site again and recycle it for its own burials.

"The only royal tomb that was found intact was the tomb of King Tut," he
said, referring to the celebrated 1922 discovery of the 13th century B.C. tomb of King
Tutankhamen in Luxor. "Can you imagine what treasure we might see today if,
say, the tomb of King Ramses II was found intact?"

Down through the millennia, pharaohs and priests were well aware that royal
tombs would make enticing targets for grave robbers and tried to build
safeguards into their burial chambers

The tomb of the 2500 B.C. King Cheops, inside the largest of the Great
Pyramids in Giza, was sealed with three thick stone doors, but according to
Hawass, there is evidence that 19th century thieves used explosives to blast
them away. Hawass notes that many royal tombs had very tight
entrances to make extracting their contents as difficult as possible.

One thousand years later, 15 centuries before the birth of Christ, Egyptian
priests of the New Kingdom moved the mummies of their rulers from their tombs
in the Valley of the Kings to a communal grave in an attempt to outwit the
tomb robbers.

Their efforts were to no avail. In the 1870s, a notorious grave-robbing
family, the Abdel Rassouls, found the grave in Luxor and began peddling its
royal treasures to local antique dealers. With the sudden appearance of
spectacular amulets and cartouches on the market, Egyptian authorities
realized that an unknown tomb was being plundered and arrested one of the
family members.

William
Tolan/FOXNews.com

Robbers, knowing the value of Egyptian antiquities,
will also deface the tomb walls and sell the fragments

Eventually, the thief cracked, leading to the greatest royal mummy find in
history. The mummies of Amenophis I, Tuthmosis II and III, Seti I and Ramses
I and III were removed from the tomb and transported by barge to Cairo, where
they are now on display at the Egyptian Museum.

But such happy endings were rare, and the 1800s became the golden years for
archaeological theft in Egypt. Treasure hunters arrived from Europe, where
the popularity of exotic Orientalist paintings and literature stoked a fierce
demand for genuine Egyptian antiquities.

And Egypt's modernizing ruler Mohammed Ali was only too willing to give up
his country's patrimony to ingratiate himself to the imperial powers. The
ancient obelisks that today adorn New York's Central Park, London's
Embankment, and the Place de la Concord in Paris were all Ali's gifts.

One of the biggest plunderers was William Flinders Petrie, a British archaeologist
and the father of modern Egyptology. Claiming all that he found, Sir Flanders
transported a staggering number of archaeological artifacts to museums in
Britain, Europe and the United States during the 1800's. He and other
treasure hunters are responsible for providing most of the great collections
of Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan
Museum in New York, Germany's Berlin Museum and the Louvre in Paris.

In 1951, the Egyptian government began to restrict treasure hunters, limiting
them to only 50 percent of the artifacts they found. But only 12 years ago
did the government seriously crack down, finally forbidding the removal of
any archaeological artifacts and threatening to break relations with foreign
institutions that steal antiquities.

William
Tolan/FOXNews.com

In Bahariya, archaeologists have discovered tombs
throughout the town, some having already been ransacked

Recently, Egypt also has begun calling for the return of several key pieces
of stolen treasure. These include the Rosetta Stone, now in London; the
celebrated bust of Queen Nefertiti in Berlin; statues of King Hatshepsut in
New York; and statues of Anh Kat, the architect of the Great Pyramids, at
Boston's Museum of Fine Art.

"These artifacts should come back to Egypt," said Hawass, who has campaigned
abroad and at the United Nations for their return. "Their absence diminishes
us."

Meanwhile, the new discoveries in the Valley of the Mummies are replenishing
the country's looted history every day. And with an estimated 10,000 mummies
to be excavated here  the largest mummy find ever  Egyptologists are likely
to be too busy over the coming years to mourn what was plundered over the
centuries.